Google has become the focus of a debate on privacy protection since it teamed up with the US National Security Administration (NSA) for the ongoing cyber-attacks investigation.

The American public grew alarmed about the security of personal information after US media reports claimed security investigators had traced the recent cyber-attacks on Google to two Chinese educational institutions. Both schools named in connection with the attacks on Google have refuted the allegations.

The Financial Times yesterday reported that US analysts said they believed they knew the identity of the Chinese author of the critical programming code used in the hacking attacks on Google. The US team who made the new discovery is said to be separate from the one that made the allegations against the two Chinese schools.